Among Amid While

31 May, 2006

Jonathan? Sure!

I love the Premier's Literary Awards dinner. It's a night when writers who aren't Neil Gaiman get to be stars: [ :) ] all these people who spend much of their lives tapping away in the quiet of their rooms emerge into the limelight and a chosen ten or so get to stand up at the podium and say something witty or profound or incoherent and shake a politician's hand to great applause. I was going to say it was like a literary Oscars, but it's more of an anti-Oscars: a celebration of the inward, the thoughtful, the critical, the gentle, the impassioned and the incisive.

30 May, 2006

George snippet

George Saunders has been on the road for In Persuasion Nation. He did a reading in LA the day after I left, if you can believe my bad luck. Anyway, from over here:

So you’re not sure what you’re working on next?I think a story will tell you what it needs if you reside with it. Einstein says something about “No worthy problem can ever be solved on the original plane of its conception.”

What I've been doing since getting back

Giving an author talk and a short-story masterclass (!) at the VATE Conference.

Finishing (I think, I hope) the copy-edits on the Red Spikes collection. The final story gave me a bit of grief; it was long and I felt I'd chosen the wrong point of view, so I changed the POV and it still seemed very long and tedious (no wonder I'm having problems getting a novel completed...), so I hauled out a couple of alternatives and sent them off. What do you reckon, Jodie? [ingratiating smile]

My only regret is that Ellen didn't like the changeling story, 'Daughter of the Clay', enough to publish it as well. However, that one's going in the new collection, Red Spikes, so if you're Australian (or friends with an Australian) you'll be able to read it before Christmas.

11 May, 2006

Agog! Ripping Reads

I just got the proofs today, so it's really happening. This will be the first story of mine to be published since Black Juice came out in March 2004; the poem in Kids' Night In 2 has been the only other new piece that's come out. Everything else has been reprints, which are good in their own way but don't give me the feeling of progress that a new publication does.

It'll also be my first publication in an anthology of original short stories - yes, I'm building my career completely arse-about. :)

Hmph, so much for blogging on the road.

OK, so I didn't win a Nebula, either. Still, there's no shame in losing to Carol Emshwiller, and I even got to hold her lovely piece of lucite for a little while - even had a Locus photo taken with a Nebula (Harlan Ellison's), almost as if I were a Grand Master myself!

We got back to Sydney this morning at about 6.15, and after some unpacking and housekeeping, the past fortnight, seems like a bit of a dream. I slept all right on the plane so I shouldn't feel too unreal, but the weather has chilled down a lot since we were here, so it doesn't seem quite the same Sydney we left 2 weeks ago. Every now and then - as I clean the stove-top, for example - I think, 'God, I met Neil Gaiman!' or - as I sort receipts - 'I sat between Nancy Kress and Kelly Link and signed books! And Harlan came up and introduced himself!' And it would have been nice to come back with a prize, so, yes, there's the odd 'Aww' about that, but it was still an amazing trip.

The little publicity I did was fun, too. The Los Angeles School Librarians Association were a great bunch - hi Caroline, hi Rosemarie! - and the students of Boulder Creek High School in Anthem, AZ, were very attentive listeners too, once we'd all got over the excitement of the fire drill - the alarms went off right as the talk was supposed to be starting, so out everyone went into the blazing sunshine. As well as themselves, the students had evacuated the Dippin' Dots machine, so while we waited for the all-clear - hi Amy, Julie and Stephanie! - they brought me up to speed on Dippin' Dots and freeze-dried ice cream. Neither of which I ended up trying before I left.

The reading at the Nebulas weekend was quiet but good - I was competing against Gordon Van Gelder interviewing Harlan Ellison, so I did well to get Kelly and Gavin and Eileen Gunn and Paolo Bacigalupi and Luke Hannaford along to listen, as well as the people who turned up 10 minutes before the end because they wanted to see the next person on the agenda.

The best part of the trip? It's a toss-up between the people (those mentioned above and many not noted as well - hi Ruth, hi Walter!) and the desert landscape. But the city and townscapes were all interesting, not to mention the supermarket-scapes and the canyons and the Mexican border and Dateland, AZ, and... It was a very quick sampling of many places I hope to go back and spend longer exploring.

Yes, I am alive.

I've been racing around the southwestern US since leaving LA last Sunday. We've 'done' (i.e. had a little taste of and vowed to return and look properly at) Death Valley, Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff, and now we're in Tempe, Arizona, for the Nebula Awards Weekend. We've been from spring to summer, then back to (Sydney-standards) winter, then abruptly back to summer again, and in fact we brought all the right clothes, from the swimmers to the woolly hats and gloves, to the glam and the bling. We've used 'em all.

Tonight is the Nebula Banquet, which is the second of the two professional high points of this visit. I'm having the best time catching up with [insert name-drops here] and meeting [insert other name-drops here] for the first time. I've now seen Connie Willis officiate at an event, instead of just photos in Locus. (She does a great job.)

Best goodie bag ever - aak! I already have about 20 new, cheap-cheap-cheap US books to bring home. But can I leave behind Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania? Or Octavia Butler's Fledgling? Or - no, I don't think I can sacrifice any of these. Add to to-do list: buy new suitcase for books.

About Me

I write fiction. My latest novel is Zeroes, the first book of the Zeroes trilogy (YA fantasy), a collaboration with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti. My novel Sea Hearts is published as The Brides of Rollrock Island in the UK and the US. I've also written Tender Morsels and five short story collections: White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes, Yellowcake and Cracklescape.